In the following essay, Watson maintains that while the Christian allegorical framework of "Goblin Market" is the means by which the story is made "'acceptable," the fairy tale subtext of the poem subverts the Christian moral of renunciation and extolls the virtues of imagination and knowledge.

Although "Goblin Market" has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the finest of children's poems1 and has repeatedly been labeled a fairy tale, in line with Christina Rossetti's own insistence on this point, there has been no serious, extensive consideration of "Goblin Market" as a children's poem drawing upon the themes and forms of traditional children's literature. This is true because, in large part, readers from the beginning to the present have had difficulty concentrating on...